


when eyes meet eyes

by Wildehack (tyleet)



Series: Star Wars Works [4]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Recognition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-15 00:13:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14779949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyleet/pseuds/Wildehack
Summary: No one can resist Recognition.





	when eyes meet eyes

**Author's Note:**

> For heelgripper, who asked me for an angsty Finn/Rey soulmates AU. 
> 
>  
> 
> Anyone else remember Elfquest? Recognition is their built-in angsty soulmates AU. :)

The song Rey learned as a child goes like this:   
  
_Heart to heart are lovers bound_  
soul meets soul when eyes meet eyes  
Child, what’s lost may yet be found  
Go seek your true love Recognized.   
  
Ingma sang it, and so did the bonepicker girls, and any other traveling Human who witnessed a marriage. Recognition was supposed to be sweet as that song–two Humans locked eyes–maybe for the first time, maybe after years of knowing each other–and Recognized each other, and then they were married, and nine months later there was always a baby. Babies born from Recognition were supposed to have special powers, although most people thought that part was a fairytale.   
  
But the whole thing was a fairytale, sugar sprinkled over the sickening truth of it. Rey had known that since she was small, too. Ingma already had three children with Ryk when she Recognized Yaron, and she and Yaron didn’t _like_ each other. Ryk threw Ingma out of his house and wouldn’t let her see her own kids, and Ingma and Yaron came together for a few fevered couplings and then went right back to hating each other, all the more so for Ingma’s life being ruined. When the baby came, it could stir the sand into tiny spirals of dust just by looking at them, which attracted all kinds of attention, and then someone came from the Order and took the baby away, and Ingma told Rey later that she was almost relieved.   
  
“Mark me, girl,” she said. “Recognition bares your soul, yes, but it doesn’t mean anything without love. If you don’t love the man, it’s nothing but your soul betraying you.”   
  
Rey listened to her, and for years avoided looking directly into the eyes of strange men.   
  
*   
  
She meets Finn’s eyes for the first time after they launch the Falcon successfully into space, both of them giddy and laughing, and when Rey catches his gaze she feels a sharp spark in her breast, and for a terrifying second she wonders if maybe  _this_ is–  
  
–but Finn doesn’t act like it, and after a relieved second or so, the spark mellows for her, too, nothing like the unrelenting fever Ingma told her about. Just a warm ember in her chest.   
  
When she’s alone on Ahch-To, trying and failing to get Luke to do the right thing, plagued by visions of Kylo Ren, she reaches for that ember, grips it in some internal way that sends reassuring heat washing through her, as real as a fire in the desert night, and imagines that somewhere Finn is thinking about her, the way she’s thinking about him. She’s glad it isn’t Recognition.   
  
She thinks it must be love.   
  
*   
  
“Can Recognition be resisted?” Rey asked Ingma, when she was small.   
  
“For a little while,” Ingma said, looking bleak. “You can try your hardest, rage against it for as long as you can. But it’s not just your body that wants it. Your soul wants it, too. And you can’t resist that for long. Even trying makes you ill.”   
  
*   
  
Recognition is a biological process. Like all biological processes, even the most fundamental and necessary–breathing, heart beating, blood flowing–it can be interrupted.   
  
As children, Stormtrooper cadets are fed inhibitors with their milk and meat.   
  
Finn will not Recognize anyone, ever.   
  
But he loves Rey a day after meeting her, and sometimes in his healing rest, he gasps in his sleep, longing after a touch like a sweet cool hand inside his chest, touching him where he has never been touched.   
  
*   
  
“ _Why_?” Rey begs Ingma. “I don’t  _want_  to be Recognized, I don’t want it.”   
  
“You may not,” Ingma says, with a low sigh. “It doesn’t happen to everyone.”   
  
“But why does it happen?” Rey demands.   
  
“The Force wants babies,” Ingma says after a while. “They’re special, different, the children of Recognition. They do great and terrible things.” Her mouth twists. “The Force will not be denied, I suppose.”   
  
*   
  
In her hut on Ahch-To, Rey reaches out her hand, and Kylo Ren touches it.   
  
Their eyes lock.   
  
*   
  
"Rey," he says, and he _knows_ her.   
  
"Ben," she answers him, something unnameable splintering in her like glass, because she _knows him_.   
  
*  
  
The horror doesn’t actually hit her until after she’s flung herself halfway across the galaxy and wholly into his power, because she’s so  _certain_  that he is wholly within her power, too. She doesn’t think about  _how_  she wants him, exactly, she just knows, deep in her bones, that the right thing is to be near to him, that everything will make sense when they are in the same place at the same time, that he is not her enemy. 

But then he won’t call off the fleet, and  _Finn is on that ship,_  the ember burning in her chest suddenly ablaze.   
  
The lightsaber tears itself in two.   
  
She can relate.   
  
*   
  
_You can’t resist Recognition,_  a voice in her mind tells her every time she closes her eyes on the Falcon, a constant jeer.  _No one can resist Recognition._

She aches with horror and hunger.   
  
“Hey,” Finn says softly. “You okay?”   
  
The voice goes quiet.    
  
“Yeah,” she says, and shuffles slightly closer to his warmth. “I’m fine now.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always appreciated.


End file.
